Nuclear Proliferation and Global Security: Laying the Groundwork for a New Policy Agenda

A default assumption shared by most observers in government, the academy, and nongovernment organizations is that all efforts should be expended to preserve the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, despite its shortcomings and structural weaknesses. Yet there is little evidence that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its subsidiary instruments have succeeded in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities since the end of the Cold War. And there is no foundation for assuming they will do any better in what will be an even more challenging global strategic environment in the twenty-first century. New arms control arrangements need to be developed that reflect the reality that nuclear proliferation cannot be prevented, only managed. Before reaching this point, however, the international community must lay to rest the myth that nuclear disarmament is achievable and begin to explore the prospects for a multipolar system of nuclear deterrence in the years ahead. The author would like to thank Martin Griffiths, Richard Leaver, Rod Lyon, and MichaelWesley for comments on earlier drafts of this article—the usual caveats apply. Notes 1. The full text of the Treaty can be found at http://disarmament2.un.org/wmd/npt/npttext.html June (accessed June 20, 2005). 2. Brad Roberts, “Proliferation and Nonproliferation: Looking for the Right Lessons,” The Nonproliferation Review, 6, 4 (Fall 1999): 77. 3. There are differing points of emphasis within the proliferation pessimist school, ranging from those who argue that nuclear weapons are too dangerous for any state to possess to those who believe that new nuclear states will struggle technically and doctrinally to institute responsible “deterrence friendly” nuclear postures following acquisition. See Peter Lavoy, “The Strategic Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: A Review Essay,” Security Studies, 4, 4 (Summer 1995): 708–711. 4. This proliferation pessimist perspective is so pervasive in the international relations literature that it seems almost redundant to recommend specific texts that exemplify this orthodoxy. For one of the more articulate critiques of the proliferation pessimist view, see David Karl, “Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers,” International Security, 21, 3 (Winter 1996/97): 87–119. 5. In particular, see David Fischer, Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons: The Past and the Prospects (London: Routledge, 1992); Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why States Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995); and Jospeh Cirincione, “Historical Overview and Introduction,” in Joseph Cirincione, ed., Repairing the Regime: Preventing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: Routledge, 2000): 1–14. 6. Robert Ayson, “Management, Abolition, and Nullification: Nuclear Nonproliferation Strategies in the 21st Century,” The Nonproliferation Review, 8, 4 (Fall 2001): 4. 7. George Bunn, “The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: History and Current Problems,” Arms Control Today, December 2003. Available at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_12/Bunn.asp (accessed December 6, 2004). 8. Carl Ungerer and Marianne Hanson, “The 2000 NPT Review Conference: A Normative Advance,” in Carl Ungerer and Marianne Hanson, eds., The Politics of Nuclear Non-Proliferation (St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 2001): 82. 9. For what remains the single most concise statement of regime theory, see the collection of essays in Stephen Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). 10. See, for instance, Joseph S. Nye, “Nuclear Learning and US-Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization, 41, 3 (Summer 1987): 371–402; T. M. Tate, “Regime Building in the Non-Proliferation System,” Journal of Peace Research, 27, 4 (November 1990): 399–414; and Jayantha Dhanapala, “The State of the Regime,” in Joseph Cirincione, ed., Repairing the Regime: Preventing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: Routledge, 2000): 15– 22. 11. For example, see Richard Gray, “Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” in Craig Snyder, ed., Contemporary Security and Strategy (London: Macmillan Press, 1999): 171–193; Michael Friend, “After Non-Detection, What? What Iraq's Unfound WMD Mean for the Future of Non-Proliferation,” UNIDIR Paper, UNIDIR/2003/38 (Geneva: UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2003); and Ashton Carter, “How to Counter WMD,” Foreign Affairs, 83, 5 (September/October 2004): 72-85. 12. Jed Snyder, “The Non-Proliferation Regime: Managing the Impending Crisis,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, 8, 4 (December 1985): 7–27. 13. China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In what some regard as a ridiculous anachronism in today's world, states deemed to possess nuclear weapons “legitimately” under Article IX of the NPT are those which “manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967.” 14. William Walker, “Nuclear Order and Disorder,” International Affairs, 76, 4 (October 2000): 708. 15. Paul Reynolds, “Future Tense as Nuclear Treaty Stalls,” BBC News Online, May 27, 2005. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/4588423.stm (accessed May 28, 2005). 16. C. Hanley, “UN Nuke Conference Offers No New Action,” The Washington Post, May 27, 2005. 17. Daryl Howlett, “The 1995 NPT Extension Conference: Can the Treaty Survive the Outcome?,” in Verification 1996: Arms Control, Peacekeeping and the Environment (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): 13–36. 18. John Simpson and Jenny Nielsen, “Fiddling While Rome Burns? The 2004 Session of the PrepCom for the 2005 Review Conference,” The Nonproliferation Review, 11, 2 (Summer 2004): 1–26. 19. For the thrust of this position, see “Statement by Stephen G. Rademaker, United States Assistant Secretary of the State for Arms Control, to the 2005 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, New York, May 2 2005.” Available at http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/statements/npt02usa.pdf (accessed May 25, 2005). 20. Claire Applegarth, “Divisions Foil NPT Review Conference,” Arms Control Today, June 2005. Available at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005_06/NPTRevCon.asp (accessed June 20, 2005). For an overview of some of the key shifts in American arms control policy and nuclear strategy under the Bush administration, see Andrew Newman, “Arms Control, Proliferation, and Terrorism: The Bush Administration's Post-September 11 Security Strategy,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, 27, 1 (March 2004): 59–88. 21. For a refreshingly nonpolemical discussion of the sources of rising unease over American global power, see Neta Crawford, “Principia Leviathan: The Moral Duties of American Hegemony,” Naval War College Review, 57, 3–4 (Summer/Autumn 2004): 67–90. 22. For more detailed discussion of Iran's dealings with the IAEA, see Wyn Bowen and Joanna Kidd, “The Iranian Nuclear Challenge,” International Affairs, 80, 2 (March 2004): 257–276. 23. Cynthia Banham, “Nuclear Ban Divides US and Downer,” The Sydney Morning Herald, April 13, 2005. 24. Frank Von Hippel, “Getting Back to Basics: Controlling Fissile Materials,” in Henry Sokolski and James Ludes, eds., Twenty-First Century Weapons Proliferation: Are We Ready? (London: Frank Cass, 2001): 84–96. 25. See, for instance, R. Johnson, “Spineless NPT Conference Papers Over Cracks and Ends with a Whimper,” Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, May 27, 2005. Available at http://www.acronym.org.uk/npt/05rep12.htm (accessed May 29, 2005). 26. 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International Crisis Group, “North Korea: Where Next for the Nuclear Talks?” Asia Report, 87 (November 15, 2004): 5–8. 32. Con Coughlin, “North Korea to Help Iran Dig Secret Missile Bunkers,” The Sunday Telegraph (UK), June 12, 2005. 33. Kurt Campbell and Tsuyoshi Sunohara, “Japan: Thinking the Unthinkable,” in Kurt Campbell, Robert Einhorn, and Mitchell Reiss, eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2004): 243–244. 34. Ariel Levite, “Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited,” International Security, 27, 3 (Winter 2002/03): 71–72. 35. For a comprehensive discussion of the A. Q. Khan network, see Chaim Braun and Christoper Chyba, “Proliferation Rings: New Challenges to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime,” International Security, 29, 2 (Fall 2004): 5–49. 36. On the possibilities of state-sponsored and state-assisted nuclear terrorism, see Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004): 61–86. 37. Sharon Sqassoni, “Proliferation Security Initiative,” Congressional Research Service Report RS21881 (January 14, 2005): CRS-3. 38. James Cotton, “The Proliferation Security Initiative and North Korea: Legality and Limitations of a Coalition Strategy,” Security Dialogue, 36, 2 (June 2005): 208. 39. Johan Jorgen Holst, “Small Powers in a Nuclear World,” in August Schou and Arne Olav Brundtland, eds., Small States in International Relations (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1971): 193. 40. On the role of self-restraint in the nonproliferation process, see Mitchell Reiss, without the Bomb: The Politics of Nuclear Nonproliferation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Harald Muller, “Maintaining Non-Nuclear Weapon Status,” in Regina Owen Karp, ed., Security With Nuclear Weapons? Different Perspectives on National Security (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991): 301–339; and George Quester, “Unilateral Self-Restraint on Nuclear Proliferation: Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and Germany,” in Bennet Ramberg, ed., Arms Control Without Negotiation: From the Cold War to the New World Order (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993), pp 141–157. 41. Michael MccGwire, “The Rise and Fall of the NPT: An Opportunity for Britain,” International Affairs, 81, 1 (January 2005): p 130. 42. Michael Wesley, “It's Time to Scrap the NPT,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, 59, 3 (September 2005): p 284. 43. See, for example, Marianne Hanson, “Nuclear Weapons as Obstacles to International Security,” International Relations, 16, 3 (December 2002): pp 361–379. 44. 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Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, “Nuclear Lessons of the Cold War,” in Ken Booth, ed., Statecraft and Security: The Cold War and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998): 71–86. 49. Robert Jervis, “The Nuclear Revolution and the Common Defence,” Political Science Quarterly, 101, 5 (1986): 700. 50. T. V. Paul, “Nuclear Taboo and War Initiation in Regional Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39, 4 (December 1995): 696–717. For discussion of the role of international law in shaping perceptions of nuclear weapons are illegitimate instruments of war, see Paul Szasz, “The International Law Concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Sohail Hashmi and Steven Lee, eds., Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 56–65. 51. See The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html (accessed April 2, 2005). 52. Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004): 25. 53. For discussion, see P. R. Chari, “Nuclear Crisis, Escalation Control, and Deterrence in South Asia,” Henry L. Stimson Centre Working Paper, August 2003. Available at http://www.stimson.org/southasia/pdf/escalation_chari.pdf (accessed April 30, 2005). 54. James Russell, “Nuclear Strategy and the Modern Middle East,” Middle East Policy, 11, 3 (Fall 2004): 110–111. 55. For an interesting analysis of the Bush administration refusal to acknowledge the deterrent role of North Korea's nuclear capability by insisting that diplomacy is “the only way forward”—in stark contrast to Iraq, where military force was the preferred instrument of choice—see Peter Howard, “Why Not Invade North Korea? Threats, Language Games, and U.S. Foreign Policy,” International Studies Quarterly, 48, 4 (December 2004): 805–828. 56. On the difficulties of using the Iraqi invasion template of “preemption” in the Iranian and North Korean contexts, see Robert Litwak, “Non-Proliferation and the Dilemmas of Regime Change,” Survival, 45, 4 (Winter 2003/04): 7–32. 57. For a fuller treatment of this argument, see Andrew O'Neil, “Learning to Live with a Nuclear North Korea: The Strategic Implications of North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Capability,” Contemporary Security Policy, 26, 2 (August 2005): pp 317–334. 58. Richard Russell, “The Nuclear Peace Fallacy: How Deterrence Can Fail,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, 26, 1 (March 2003): 136–155. American scholar Keith Payne has argued that deterrence remains a tenuous foundation for strategic stability given that not all actors share the same conception of what constitutes rational behaviour. See Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001). 59. Francis Gavin, “Blasts From the Past: Proliferation Lessons From the 1960s,” International Security, 29, 3 (Winter 2004/05): 103–104. 60. See John Lewis and Xue Litai, “Strategic Weapons and Chinese Power: The Formative Years,” The China Quarterly, 112 (December 1987): 541–554. 61. For the classic statement of this view, see Kenneth Waltz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better,” Adelphi Paper, 171 (May 1981). 62. Jordan Seng, “Less Is More: Command and Control Advantages of Minor Nuclear States,” Security Studies, 6, 4 (Summer 1997): 55.

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